End of November

Tags

Christmas, covid, online, PEI, shopping, Weather, Xmas cards

Today it was 16C and warm here in PEI beautiful sunshine and frankly another record breaking day more like May than November. The weather person tells us that this Winter is going to be apparently wet rainy and icy but not much snow, I prefer wet to snow. We are back into a something like a lockdown but not really. The major thing is, we cannot leave the Island and frankly I would not want to, I really think it is not safe.

Today was Black Friday, I had to do some grocery shopping and buy some fish for dinner. I was looking for either Cod or Halibut filet, got Halibut which is my favourite in terms of flavour. Will made a gratin of Halibut in a cheese sauce, it was some good.

The traffic was murder and lots of little old ladies driving around at 5 MPH, it felt like I was living in a huge metropolitan area. Got it all done within 90 minutes and back home I went. Despite the traffic most people actually stayed home and shopped online, we do most of our shopping online now too.

I really have to get going on Xmas cards and I was going to do them this week but I got sidetracked with other things. Yesterday I gave a short talk on the Official Residence of the Lieutenant Governor and the architectural history of this 1834 building built in the Greek revival style or Georgian style. The Lieutenant Governor who is a Patron of our Club came to hear the talk.

This weekend will be quiet the Xmas Market has been cancelled on Richmond Street, which is unfortunate for the merchants but Public Health comes first. We also decided that we may have a very quiet Christmas Eve and Christmas day, we thought of asking a few friends over but everyone is nervous and if things don’t improve despite the fact we have only 1 case on the Island and a mild one at that, according to our Chief Medical Officer, we will re-assess.

Another Covid day

Tags

anxiety, Canada., cooking, Covid 19, cuisine, Food, PEI, shopping, Stress

So this Monday we have lovely sunny and warm weather, so I went for an hour long walk to the end of our street and along the Hillsborough River to Victoria Park which is the former Royal Park of the Lieutenant Governor’s Residence. It’s a very big park about 90 acres of forest and parkland. On one side is the Residence of the L.G. with its 10 acres of manicured park and old trees. The grounds are usually open but the L.G. told the groundskeeper to close the gates during the pandemic.

It is so quiet and pleasant to walk along the streets by the river with its beautiful parks and old trees, mansions and nice homes. No cars and just a few people who seeing you coming simply take their distances.

I was at the supermarket yesterday and I just became anxious, nervous and tired of the place. There was not many people in the store it was quiet and no waiting at the cashier station. Still I just dislike it and find people in general to be self centred and not aware of their surroundings. I only go now about once every 8 days and try to go early to avoid people. There is stress in all of this and I am also tired of constantly sanitizing everything.

We are in PEI in a privilege situation in North America and Canada, no cases and no one sick or recovering. The down side, people immediately feel over confident thinking its over and let’s return to before 11 March when it all started.  Our Island borders are still closed but there is a lot of political pressure to re-open to allow people from elsewhere in Canada and the USA to come to their Summer cottages. Like many I am firmly against such an idea, Canada has 70,000 cases now most of them in Quebec and Ontario the two most populous provinces. With numbers still climbing each day though not as fast. Montreal is a real disaster area, it is so bad that the Government of Quebec may quarantine the entire Island of Montreal some 4 million people to flatten the curve.

We will have a quiet Summer in PEI our tourism traffic is down 90% and now operators are hoping in Islanders as customers, renting camp grounds and staying in resorts or renting a cottage by the beach.

Here are some pictures of what we have been cooking or got from the Water Prince restaurant across the street from us now open for take-out. You may know this restaurant where many celebrities comes for a lobster. It is a simply unpretentious place but the food is superb and we know the owner and his son and all the staff. Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee ate there a few years ago.

Malpeque Oysters on the half shell prepared for us at the Water Prince. A nice appetizer for dinner.

Haligut and chips. At the moment Halibut is in Season and I prefer it to Haddock.

Made at home, puff pastry stuffed with meat and vegetables served with Brocolletti.

Pastry stuffed with raspberry jam and sliced almonds.

Made this meat pie with vegetables for an evening dinner.

A 3 lbs Pork Roast in a cast iron pan, using a marinade of garlic, thyme, rosemary and Cayenne pepper. The cast iron pan is perfect and it goes into the oven. It was soooo good.

Banana Foster a New Orleans recipe with Rum, brown sugar and vanilla ice cream.

Banana Bread,  Nicky and Nora love a piece of banana in the morning after their breakfast. So we had too many bananas and made bread out of the more ripe ones.

 

Shopping

Tags

chowder, covid19, liquor, Montague, PEI, shopping

This Friday morning I had a list of items I needed so off to the grocery store I go. I have a mask and surgical gloves. The store is in Stratford formerly known as SouthPort across the river from us, a short 5 minute ride away. I stopped at the gas station to fill up and saw the new low price of 0.71 cents just 7 days ago it was $1.14 a litre so I filled up, putting on my gloves first so as not to touch the pump and it cost me only $14. I cannot remember when was the last time I paid so little, maybe 1982. The grocery store is a Sobey Extra which is a giant store with a drugstore and a liquor store (closed at the moment) next door. I like this store, it is clean and well managed, the carts are clean, the parking lot was a quarter full this morning around 10:30am. The shelves were well stocked, the only 2 items you cannot find is Lysol wipes and Hydrogen Peroxide, otherwise it’s all on the shelves, lots of meats and fresh fruits and vegetables. I was looking for lamb because Easter is coming but I think ham is more popular, there was an awful lot of ham of all kinds. I did get the Lamb for our Easter lunch which will be a small affair this year, only the two of us. Saw my favourite cashier chatted briefly across the plexiglass divide. The only problem with wearing a mask and glasses, your glasses fog up. I noticed that almost all shoppers had gloves on, with the exception of a few under 35 yr old people and everyone was very good at keeping 6 feet away from others including at the Cash register. All the aisles are one way so you must follow the arrows pointing the direction of an aisle, again people were careful to do so.

The new procedure is when you go to check out, you must wait on the designated spot on the floor until the cashier motions you to come forward. The cashier will motion to you to put your items on the conveyer belt after it has been disinfected with bleach, this must be done after each client, you also bag your own now. The music playing in the store was Whitney Houston, which I always liked and it reminded me of Cairo, but this is another story.

Here in PEI our liquor stores are closed with the exception of 4 in total still open on shorten hours. This is creating some problems for Islanders, however you can buy beer from private brewery and we have quite a few craft brewers on the Island. I do not drink beer so this is no help to me. Given that the only store in Charlottetown had 2 city block waiting lines to get in and a maximum on purchase is $100 has been impose, given the price of booze that means 2 to 3  bottles of liquor and 6 bottles of wine. I am starting to think that the Methodist and the Presbyterians have mounted a conspiracy to dry up the Island, an evil plot I tell you. We cannot go to the mainland to shop for liquor in New Brunswick because the bridge is closed. So the only other solution is to drive to Montague which is East of us about 30 minutes on the road and go to the liquor store there. We will visit friends also, this means because of Covid 19, honking your horn in front of their house and screaming and waving as you drive by.

We continue to clean the house and today we dismantle and cleaned the guest bedroom and put it back together. Then Will made some chowder Manhattan style with lots of fish, scallops and shrimps, it was very good. I am just happy that the weather is better and it is Spring.

 

Christmas shopping

Tags

Food, home, Jordan, London, shopping, Travel, wines, XMAS

Many years ago when I was posted to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for the holidays I would fly back to Canada with a stop in London with British Airways. Amman  to London is about 5 hours. The fun of London was the shopping. The stores had so many fun items, you just wanted to buy it all. One request was to bring home to Canada a baby Stilton, the food hall at Harrod’s had such an item. The baby Stilton is the size of a human baby, this being Stilton it is pungent and needed to be wrapped up properly for the long flight home in Business Class. London is known for its great shopping and there was all kind of great gift food items and not to mention the visit to the wine merchants, what was on offer was mind boggling, not only wines and quality vintages but a great selection of Champagnes and liqueurs of all kinds, so many wonderful choices.

Not to mention the great restaurants and things to see in Museums and galleries. There was also the theatre and so many enjoyable plays. Yes that stop in London was lots of fun, it was always guaranteed to bring home unusual gifts.

And for Xmas how about this group Out of the Blue are Oxford’s all-male singing sensation and two times UK champions of a cappella. Featured on Britain’s Got Talent in 2011 and more recently being recognised by pop-diva Shakira and press all around the world, the group combines award-winning musicality with outrageously unprofessional choreography and mostly intentional comedy! Founded in 2000, the group is made up of students from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University. Each year brings a fresh batch of faces, voices and arrangements. They raises funds through their music for the Helen & Douglas House Hospice for Children and Young Adults a registered hospice charity based in Oxford, England, providing palliative, respite, end-of-life and bereavement care to life-limited children and young adults and their families. The Patron is HRH Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

 

 

One of my favourite stores

Tags

Berlin, KaDeWe, Nazi, shopping, Tietz family

There is always a store or stores which are favourites for their wares on offer and the service they give customers. In Italy I had several such stores, elegant, beautiful and with a certain flair. In London I like Liberty with its Tudor revival architecture on Regent street or Selfridges on Oxford street.

In Berlin I like KaDeWe as it is called by the locals but whose name is Kaufhaus des Westens on Tauentzienstrasse the closest U-Bahn station is Wittenbergplatz. Kadewe.de

With over 60,000 square metres of selling space and more than 380,000 articles available on 7 floors and with a beautiful restaurant on the roof. The store was founded in 1907 their motto is Live the Lifestyle you love.

The so-called “Luxury Boulevard” is also situated here, with Bulgari, Burberry, Cartier, Céline, Chanel, Chopard, Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Hermès, Miu Miu, Montblanc, Longchamp, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Rolex, Tiffany & Co., Tod’s, Vertu, Wellendorff and Yves Saint Laurent . So many beautiful things to look at and possibly buy.

The story of KaDeWe goes like this, when the store opened Berlin was the capital of the German Empire, a cosmopolitan and crowded city with 800.000 inhabitants, full of museums, theatres and auditoriums, provided with a notable infrastructure it was a rich, proud and happy city.

KaDeWe located in Tauentzienstrasse, near to the fashionable Ku´damm was a symbol of  that spirit, the golden times: an elegant place to spend time in the beauty salon or the tearoom and to buy tailored dresses or delicatessen and caviar in the famous food court.

Kadewe, survived the First World War disaster, it was even enlarged in the uncertain times of the Weimar Republic, but like the city it was a victim of the Nazi Dictatorship: the jewish owners the Hermann Tietz group was forced in 1933 to sell the Department Store due to the boycott of the banks that refused to grant any credit after the implementation of the Nuremberg race laws. Within a few days, the Tietz family had sold all of its stock in the company to its creditors, among them Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, and the Dresdner Bank, for somewhere around 10% of their market value. The family eventually left Germany for the USA. The Dresdner Bank promoted the store Manager to CEO and Georg Karg profited from this war opportunity.  In 1949 the Tietz family received some financial compensation and 3 buildings from Georg Karg, they rebuilt part of their commercial holdings in Germany with success. In 2008 the family received more compensation on bank account holdings which had been confiscated in 1934 by the Nazi regime.

After years of Nazi management of Kadewe, in 1943 an American warplane crashed into it, the building burnt to the ground, a ruin until 1950, it became a metaphor of the ruined city.

The restoration of the KaDeWe building was a symbol of the resurgence of West Berlin, the new beginning, it also became a hated monument to consumption in East Berlin.

After the German reunification in 1989, the Department Store became once again the best-known in Germany and the largest one in the European continent with 60,000 square metres of sales floors. The store was completely renovated between 2004-2007 of the centennial anniversary, nowadays is the third most visited attraction in Berlin after the Bundestag (Reichstag) and the Brandenburg Gate.

The roof top restaurant and the food hall with a Moet Champagne bar to relax from all the shopping. Today KaDeWe is owned by the Central Group from Thailand. If you visit Berlin go and shop at KaDeWe it is a very nice experience.

It’s that Xmas Season again

Tags

Christmas, commercialism, Noël, PEI, shopping

Like snow in Winter in Canada, commercial crass Xmas is upon us again. I had to go to the grocery store early this morning for a small dinner party we are giving tonight. This being now officially December all the xmas commercial crap was out in full force. The grocery store is one of those superstores where you can buy household goods and groceries. They had lots of shiny decorations and things for that Xmas party you are dying to give for all your friends. Plates, cookie jars, lanterns in translucent green, red and gold, reindeers and Santa’s and god knows what else, because it is so much fun, you are just bursting at the seems with delirious anticipation. Not to forget the sorry looking half dead pointsettia for $20 dollars, wreaths and boughs for $50 dollars. Cookies loaded with chocolate, why is there chocolate in everything now? What ever happened to the simple cookie, you have to make your own I suppose. Any catered food is super expensive from $35. dollars upwards with no guarantee that it is good to taste. Have you notice how melted cheese and cream sauce with a jalapeno on top is now the rigueur in any dish, why I wonder. I also went to the Dollar Store, I know that my faithful readership will gasp at this admission on my part, but I do have a good excuse, I was looking for a cheap shoe horn at $1. Rest assured I never go there, ever, I am not lowering my standards. However while in the shop, there were aisle after aisle of the cheapest Xmas ornaments and paraphernalia to make virgins blush, including the holy Mother of God. None of those items on offer will last more than one year and you can see it all in the garbage bin on 26 December, how very sad.

We have all our traditional decorations we accumulated for the last 39 years and each is special to us because of where we got them. Looking at them brings back memories of years long ago in this or that country. We may still buy from time to time something special we saw in a market to adorn our tree but this as become rarer with the years.

This year Hanukkah starts on 24 December and last until 1 January. We do not have any Jewish friends here on the Island, I do not believe there is a Jewish community either. But I think it is rather neat that the two holiday periods coincide in 2016.

Well let’s just think happy thoughts on an old fashion Christmas Season, no not a Victorian one, more like a Scandinavian one, a more European flavour to it all to counter the crass commercialism and the eternally unsatisfied kids who always want more junk.

Noël by Gustave Doré, painter and illustrator. 

Meal Time

Tags

daily, Europe, Food, imagination, planning, portions, shopping, Wine

The idea or inspiration for this meal time planning entry was suggested by a post from sporeflections.wordpress.com who lives vicariously in Arizona, apparently they are having an early Spring.

Many people live stressful lives and work far too much, in my humble opinion, work as a concept is highly overrated, in post-modern times we have forgotten to enjoy a meal and just relaxing about life in general. So with this in mind and since I am the generous sort here is a pragmatic little secret I share with you.

I do most of the food shopping and I shop on a daily basis instead of one giant trip to the grocery store each week. I find that every day you can plan ahead and have lots of choices on what you want to serve at meal time. I also follow the rule of Helen Corbitt (1906-1978), the head chef for many years in the kitchen of the flagship Neiman Marcus, who really believed in having a pantry with emergency supplies for guests who just appear. She had a long list of items but oh so practical.

Usually by 8am I know what I am serving that day for dinner or lunch or both. If people come for dinner or for lunch, we do a lot more luncheons now, I can plan a complete menu 3 days in advance, so no surprises, the secret is too keep it simple, good and enjoyable.

All you need is a bit of imagination, discipline and planning and know what works for you. I would never do a new recipe on people in the hope that it might be ok or might work or say to my guests, ”I have no idea if this is good or bad, never tried it before.”

Chef Helen Corbitt of the Zodiac Room at Neiman Marcus, Dallas

I am retired but still fairly busy each day with all manner of things to do around the house and in town. If you are really run off your feet and feel tired by the time you get home, here are some tips on what could help you along instead of going to a fast food outlet or eating frozen processed meals, which is equivalent to rat poison in my book.

The first thing to do is establish what both of you at home like to eat, that should be fairly easy. I usually buy daily a small amounts of fresh lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes which I leave on the counter because the fridge is bad for them, apples, clementines or oranges but only a few, never a bag, in winter because of cost I will buy other fruits more of the season and not imported. Our Canadian dollar is only worth 0.67 cents US right now so it does make a difference in the final bill. Also many other green vegetables or root vegetables, I usually serve 2 vegetables minimum with a meal.

By buying selectively, I can decide ahead of time what green vegetables, root vegetables or potatoes, a variety of them, I wish to prepare with the meal. As for meat, since we have a crockpot, we can prepare spaghetti sauce, stews and soups, etc. I will get Will to tell me what he wants me to buy and then we will spend a couple of days preparing cooking dishes which can be frozen and you have a variety of things in the freezer you can pull out.

I also like to buy chicken, but never whole, parts, deboned and skinless, escalope style or thighs etc… Ham steaks or meat balls my butcher makes. I will also look at other cuts of meat or fowl. Am not buying steaks any more because of the cost again but burger meat like beef, veal, I can mix up with spices and do burgers which I can then freeze. So I have about 7 days of meals prepared ahead of time.

As for fish or seafood, given the state of the oceans nowadays, it is becoming very problematic to buy fresh or wild. Most of the stuff sold in supermarkets is from Asia or South America so do consider that it has been on the road for at least 3 weeks before it gets to you. Though I do look for product from Canada in fish and seafood, PEI being a good source well known for quality.

I also get things like good cheeses and deli meats at my butcher which is cut fresh, I do not buy the pre-packaged processed meats because of the salt content. Fresh eggs can be cooked hard boiled or you can make an omelette and this is simply enough for a lunch. Sicilian Olives because they are sweet and not vinegary and assortment of nuts, but always in small quantities because it looses its freshness quickly.

I also try hard to stick to what I like to call European portions, meaning meat is 5oz steak or pasta is no more than 100 gr. and sauce simply to cover not drown. You can serve a salad with that, dressing just olive oil or a nice gourmet dressing. These days we love blue cheese which is made by our food store and has none of those unpronounceable ingredient names. As for breads I buy small quantities daily or every 3 days, fresh, never that processed white bread stuff that looks like insulation. I do like the hard crust and dense bread.

So by shopping everyday and buying only according to what I planned, we have a diversity of things to eat. Having also a variety of prepared meals which can be reheated makes for variety every night of the week.

As for inviting people over for lunch usually on a Saturday or Sunday, I try to plan a meal that is nice but requires simple steps and everything is ready when the guests arrive. We can have a pre meal drink, to keep things easy I will offer a bubbly and some olives or radishes. I remember reading in my manual from the Hotel School in Lausanne that liquor or cocktails before meals is not a good idea since it spoils the palate for the meal to come. Since we are going to have a meal, you don’t want to ruin your guests appetite with chips and dips.

I also try to keep the desserts light, no heavy cakes or anything too rich. Usually if it is just the two of us, there is no desserts, maybe a fresh fruit not canned. If we have guests then it will be a nice sweet but something that accompanies the meal instead of fighting for first place and displacing the main dish in texture and taste. I find that serving a small glass of dessert wine is a good alternative dessert. I always think that our guests will thank us for not overloading their stomachs with too rich foods.